Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Floods in China and Europe

The objective of this website is to continuously add links to projects, policies, and science covering the fields climate change, energy, environment, and floods in Europe and China. This website does not ask to be complete but will be expanded continuously. Please contact me if you wish to add a link.

Climate Change, China, Europe and this website in a nutshell

Global warming is described by the increase of the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century, and its projected continuation.

The average global air temperature near the Earth's surface increased by 0.74 ± 0.18°C from 1906-2005. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas concentrations" via the greenhouse effect (IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

The predicted effects of global warming on the environment and for human life can be numerous and are various for every region, considering also i) the non-linearity of the climate system, teleconnections, and global climate systems, and ii) the manifold effects such as flood trends for the Yangtze River, desertification in the Hunghe Basin. It is generally difficult to attribute specific natural phenomena to long-term causes, but some effects of recent climate change may already be occurring.

China is a key-example for long-term weather monitoring. Regional Records can reach more than 2000 years back and it is clear that phenonema such as weather extremes and floods belong to the normal climatic cycle in China, but extremes and anomalies have incleased in the past 50 years. Remaining scientific uncertainties include the amount of warming expected in the future, and how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe.

Most national governments, even Australia, have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is ongoing political and public debate worldwide regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences.

In turn, it is possible already to detect how climate and environment-human systems have changed in the past 100 years. This is especially relevant for China.

China is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but China is not the chief climate-change culprit. Individually, Americans produce much more carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases than the Chinese do. That's because the US has about one-fourth of China's population. China’s greenhouse gas emissions per capita rank only in the lowest third of the top 100 countries in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per capita. As a developing country, China is not only contributing to global warming and climate change, it is also facing the challenges that climate change impacts will call for.

This website is trying to combine all aspects of climate change related to climate change, from energy (climate change mitigation capacities) to impacts. It aims at China (top GHG emitter, host of the world’ third and fifth largest rivers affected by Climate Change) and the EU as the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter who is the key-player for the international climate change policy and related negotiations.

Content for each section with the author’s view will be added continuously. The tag “Gemmer Publications” displays the author’s publications in this field so far.